Read More

Parenting news

Armed with a bag of defrosted peas, which Google had informed us would be the healthiest and best thing to feed the ducks, we set off to Hylands Park, Writtle, Central Park, and the river Chelmer.

Reporter Piers Meyler feeds ducks in Hylands

After quickly discovering that ducks are more interested in running away from peas than eating them, we set out again with flapjacks, which the Canal and River Trust say is fine to feed ducks, to try again.

We developed our own scoring system to measure each group of ducks on five key things.

These are:

Aggression towards us and each other

Hunger

Apparent happiness

Interest

How much they quacked

Why bread is bad for ducks

According to the Canal & River Trust these are five of the main reasons why feeding bread to ducks is a bad idea:

Ducks need a varied diet to be healthy, bread doesn't have much nutritional value and fills ducks up so they don't forage for foods they would naturally eat, which can lead to malnutrition.

Uneaten soggy bread can cause a build-up of bad nutrients which can lead to greater algal growth, spread disease and encourage pests such as rats.

Throwing bread into a canal or river can create overcrowding of bird populations, as the birds will flock to the same location in search of their starchy treat.

Too many ducks or waterfowl in one place can stress the birds and lead to their habitats being damaged.

It also creates excessive amounts of bird droppings which, along with being smelly and slippery underfoot, can reduce water quality and clog waterways with harmful algae

Each of these extremely important measures were scored out of 100 to give us a clear indication of which ducks people should head out to feed depending on whether they want to feed noisy ducks, aggressive ducks, excitable ducks, or calm and docile ducks.

To see all of our findings at each site watch the video at the top of the story.